Video Server, Screen Control System, Video Effects Processor…
A Powerful Tool for Every Production

PVP3 Now Shipping!

What is PVP?

ProVideoPlayer (PVP) is a Mac-based software application designed to play back and manipulate video across one or more screens.

For over a decade, productions and installations have used ProVideoPlayer for playback to one or more screens along with other tools as part of the full rig: ProPresenter for text and CG, a video rig for camera shots and live produced content, and an expensive screen control system to pull it all together. For many events, a lot of powerful and expensive equipment is radically under-utilized, so we set out to see if we could make a single product that would provide the tools needed for many productions when the complexity of more expensive solutions is unnecessary. That is the vision realized with PVP3.

Design Philosophy

Output Tools

User Interace

Playing Nicely with Others

Design Philosophy

Live Production or Fixed Installation

PVP3 is a great tool for live productions, but is also perfect for fixed-installations such as lobbies, themed attractions, digital signage, or any other project where a dedicated operator isn’t required. With scheduled events and external communication tools*, you can make an impact without even being there. Installed PVP projects have been running for over a decade in venues all over the world.

Live Event

Corporate Lobby

NOTE: Communications is coming soon to PVP3.

Cues and Actions

We based PVP3 on the familiar terms common to productions. Productions consist of cues, and when a cue is fired, multiple actions can take place. Every playlist in PVP3 consists of cues and each cue can have one or more actions. By default, when you drag media into a PVP3 playlist you are creating single-action cues… meaning that the media imported will fire on the chosen layer when the cue is selected. In addition to media actions, you can also have non-visible actions such as changing layouts, masks, effects, opacity, blend modes, build durations, transitions… or most any other aspect of your outputs to ensure that you get exactly what is expected when you fire a cue.

Scheduler – Set It and Forget It

PVP3 features a comprehensive scheduling engine that allows the automated triggering of specific playlists at any given minute of any given day, repeatable for as long as you desire. Every media action can loop, soft loop, loop for a specified amount of time, or loop for a specific number of times. Every cue has an end behavior that can be specified to do nothing, go to next, go to random. Combining these automation tools offers an extraordinary level of flexibility for fixed installations, walk-in loops, or comprehensive salvos of behaviors.

A comprehensive scheduler is just one of many automation tools in PVP3

Output Tools

Map what you want… where and when you want It

PVP3 is a multi-screen, multi-layer video playback and processing tool. That means you can connect as many displays as your computer can handle, including graphics-direct (DVI, HDMI, VGA), broadcast (SDI), network-based (NDI, Syphon) outputs, or any combination therein. Each output usually corresponds to one or more screens. The media triggered in any layer can be mapped to one or more screens… either full screen or within one or more targets (rectangle, polygon, circle, bezier path) that you choose. This allows for fine-tuned design of content across rotated screens, screens of various shapes, and odd aspect ratios. Because the target sets that you build are global throughout the application, you can easily change target sets on any given layer at any time and save this mapping as part of the cue so content always plays exactly the way you want it. Additional options include specifying a default layer for all content played within a playlist ensuring that content made for a specific screen is never played anywhere else.

What’s on your Canvas?
A variety of tools for a variety of displays

There is a multitude of display technologies available today, and we want you to be able to take advantage of any of them. If you need to project onto a ultra-wide or ultra-tall screen, PVP3 can generate vertical or horizontal edge blends from right within the application. If your projector is projecting at an odd angle, corner pinning tools make filling the screen easy. If you are using one ore more LED processors to create a multi-screen visual effect, you can break up outputs and treat each individual piece of the display independently. If you have an array of LCD displays in a mosaic of landscape, portrait, or odd angles, you can match their physical orientation from within our canvas so content is matched precisely. What’s more, our canvas editor lets you work with displays in physical units (feet, meters, etc), so you can see your output screens in relative physical size to every other screen.

Outputs, Screens, and Targets
Please Identify yourselves!

As productions get more and more complex with more and more screens, the ability to quickly identify and verify the signal flow from your machine to the final output screens is hugely beneficial. When outputs or screens are identified, the name of the output, the signal type, and the signal format are shown. When targets are identified, a test pattern, or a graphic of your choosing is shown. Never again will you spend hours making sure routing from source to output is correct — you’ll know at a glance.

Identify Screen

Identify Output

Identify Targets

Layout Editor -> Identify Targets

Multi-Channel Audio Control

When working live events and conferences, is all too common to receive batches of videos from multiple producers at the last minute… each with their own audio level settings and channel mapping. One band might have a click track in channel 1… another on channel 5. Keeping track of what channels contain what content is a frustrating task for video jockeys as there’s never been an easy way to know what track is what or to change how it is routed to the audio guys. With PVP3, you can monitor and solo each channel of content through the main or secondary output… route source audio channels to one or more output channels, normalize the audio of each channel, or change the gain of each channel.

Beyond video effects, which manipulate the visual aspects of one video based on specific algorithms, PVP3 allows you to blend video layers together using a variety of various blend modes. To start with, each layer has an opacity setting so you can control the level of transparency of one video to the videos on lower layers. 28 other blend modes allow precise control over how your visual layers will interact. For example, put a dynamic mask visual on top of your videos to create a dynamic frame, or combine a motion background with a live video feed to stylize a live camera shot.

Masks
Because what you don’t see is just as important as what you do

PVP3’s comprehensive mask editor allows for multiple shapes (including rectangles, circles, freeform bezier paths) with or without feathered edges, or an imported image with an alpha channel. Mask sets can be triggered manually or as an action on any given cue.

User Interface

Sophisticated… not Complex

When we designed and built PVP3, we set out to make a comprehensive tool that solved many of the problems we’ve encountered working our own productions… this leads to an extraordinarily sophisticated toolset. At the same time, however, we recognized that a lot of feature-rich tools are complex and confusing to use. We believe that PVP3 strikes a great balance in giving you access to a lot of what you need in multi-video screen productions while still being approachable and easy to use. We make tools available when you want them, but hidden when you don’t. By focusing on keeping things simple, we seek to decrease the amount of human errors that occur in productions… you should know at a glance exactly what is going to happen when you fire cues and never be caught by surprise.

Show what you need, hide what you don’t

Every production is different and every user has different desires. PVP3 offers you an extensible interface that can show you only those things that you need. If you want to see the effects, targets, transitions, blend modes, and opacity of every single layer you can do that. Or, you can turn everything off and just focus on the cues by hiding all of the options.

Simplified User Interface

Advanced User Interface

Colors Everywhere… for the way you work

Proper use of colors can significantly help you keep track of layers, targets, and clips. For example, you can specify red as the color for your side screen outputs so that you know anything that is going to only go to the side screens should be colored red. You can make a playlist default to a specific layer, in which case every action on that layer will show an unfilled “pill” at the bottom of the thumbnail indicating that when triggered that action will go to the side screen layer. The fact that it makes the user interface pretty is just a bonus.

Color coded Layers Panel

Color Coded Actions Panel

Snapshots
Get things just the way you want them on screen… then just save it!

It happens all the time. You need to try out content on multiple screens for a sophisticated production. You put up all the content on all the screens. The producer makes some changes — brighten up this clip, color match this clip, etc. — and then, when it’s perfect, save it. Problem is, you have made these changes to the individual layers to do it in real-time and will have to recreated it as a preset. Well, now you can just save the exact look you have as a cue using our Snapshot function. With this new functionality, you can save the output and all its settings easily with the flexibility to choose what visual aspects of the output you desire to be saved.

Playing Nicely with Others
because we're just a part of the Community

Working with ProPresenter or ProPresenter Scoreboard
Siblings that actually get along

Because PVP3 supports NDI inputs, you can send an NDI signal from a ProPresenter equipped computer on your network (with appropriate modules enabled) and map that as you would any other live video input within PVP3. This lets you show video, lyrics, titles, lower thirds, social media, or any other output generated by ProPresenter or ProPresenter Scoreboard to be mapped wherever you desire in PVP3. If you are sending an alpha channel feed from ProPresenter, the alpha key is preserved in the output of PVP3. Audio is also streamed through the ProPresenter NDI output. In short, it just works like it should.

Time Code Control

PVP3 features a comprehensive timecode control mechanism at a playlist level. This gives you the flexibility to either fire Cues of content that can run freely once triggered, or individual actions that will follow the timecode precisely. In this manner, you can set up an entire show of timecode controlled cues and walk away confident that the cues you want to see at any given time will be there… right where you want them.

Cue to Cue, made for you

PVP3 features a number of features to help your cue-to-cue rehearsals run smoothly. Need to jump to 10 seconds to the end of the video? A single button makes that happen. Does your on-stage band want to rehearse the middle of the song with video? Timecode follow tracks right along. The biggest pitfalls in any production are in the transitions between cues… we set out to make the rehearsal of these elements easy.

Live video inputs with previews

Static thumbnails are fine for identifying video clips, but when you have multiple live-video sources, you want to see what is going to go to the screen before you fire it. Our Live Video playlist shows what’s happening on any hardware (SDI/HDMI), software (syphon), or network (NDI) video input in real-time. Now, to be clear, we don’t think of PVP3 as a replacement to a dedicated video switcher for most productions, but when you have fixed cameras or need to frame multiple camera shots into different targets, you will appreciate this new functionality.